Pre-Observing Report: Update

As fate would have a large group of dark clouds have been approaching rapidly from the East. They have just appeared on the radar and will apparently last until 11pm. Dome opening has obviously been delayed for a few hours.

Pre-Observing Report

The weather predictions look good for tonight. Once again, mostly clear skies with light and variable winds under 10mph for the first half of the night and then under 5mph for the duration. Seeing is forecast to be good, not excellent, but good, indicating seeing around 1.2"-1.5" for the night. Odds are that I will be able to get excellent photometry for all of my objects, save one. That lone star is polluted by the light reflected by Saturn. The level of pollution two nights ago was tolerable, but not so last night and I can imagine this night will be even worse. Although this would seem to be an issue, I have photometry on HIP 54639 from my run in February and thus it is not a total detriment. So, lift your mug with a choice beverage (mine is coffee!) and here's to clear skies!

Rock and Astronomy

Since I do such a great job of keeping this thing updated, I thought it necessary to inform the world that I am in Arizona atop Kitt Peak. Actually, I'm not quite at the top. Another 2 miles up the curvy and desolate road is the summit where the Kitt Peak National Observatory is located. I'm situated on a small peak below, along with the 2.4 meter Hiltner telescope, also part of MDM. I have discovered that heavy metal and astronomy go well together. While I have not found the perfect playlist to offset the weariness that comes around 2:30a (AZ time), I have found that Megadeath goes well with morning twilight sky flat fielding. It is surprising how well you feel at 5:30a with Symphony of Destruction playing as you home the telescope and close up the dome; the first rays of sunshine for that day illuminating the telescope as the dome shutter slowly makes its way down to shut the telescope off from the world after a hard nights work. The next time you are out observing the twinkling wonders of the heavens, I strongly recommend bringing a collection of rock and/or heavy metal... preferably metal - most rock these days is from bands that are some form of Nickelback... they all sound the same and suck while they're at it. For those that aren't adventurous and don't want anything too "heavy", go for Metallica.

Shuttin' Detroit Down

I count my blessing everyday; I get paid to do something I love and my "job" is pretty much locked up for the next 4 years, as long as I qualify for PhD candidacy. Others in this world aren't so lucky... many in this world aren't so lucky. I've lived a blessed life and have not had to struggle to get by; ends have always met. There is one thing, though, that I am a firm believer in, and that's hard work and dedication and I respect all those who do the jobs that make our comfortable lives possible and those who work 10 times as hard as I do just to put food on their table.

My girlfriend would be proud, I am a fan of a country song.

Solution #3

The solution to Physics Question #3 is posted, take a look, see if you're intuitions were correct!

Bessel Functions

Having just encountered Bessel Functions for the second time in my life, I must say that they did not seem any friendlier. For a non-axisymmetric galaxy gravitational potential (think of a barred spiral galaxy), the surface brightness of the galaxy may be defined using a double integral over two Bessel Functions, J0 and J1, both with different arguments. I have to say, it was gruelling and a pain in the ass, but I was finally able to get it to work out earlier today. It involved doing one integral on the computer, but the rest was a lot of calculus to get it to work. As hard as it was, it was fun, and the satisfaction of actually obtaining a result was great. Still, Bessel Functions and I are not close friends. There are relations between them and various integrals that are easier to do than others, it's just a matter of finding which form you need and how to get there. Rather annoying, but worth the time and effort put in. Maybe I'll post the solution later.

Universe Today RSS

I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that I have added an RSS feed from universetoday.com which is a good website to read up on some current findings in astronomy. They also have good educational podcasts, quizzes, etc. Some of you might find it interesting and informative. If not, no harm done!